GREAT competative miniatures game that also works very well for solo gaming. Rulebook is lavishly illustrated with art that extrudes the feel of "The Running Game" and similar movies. Editorials and Setting Articles give a solid understanding of the game's premise and the rationale for game rules implementation. Really like the straight-forward rules for creating your own Hunters and the wide range of options for making them yours. Card-based Crims activtion is very straight-forward and rules are fully explained and examples are provided for all critical game activities. Have already dugout my old Necromunda terrain and miniatures and have started design of a modular 3ftx3ft playing board.

I'm extremely happy you like the game... and rest assured, Urban Manhunt will be fully supported, complete with an advancing timeline.
The Event Deck is already available in print format (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/248231/Urban-Manhunt--Event-Deck), but I had to revise something on the pack that contains the Control Cards and Crim Cards. They'll be available shortly as well. The hardcover version is already at the printers and I await my proof copy, so it won't be long before it's available. The softcover version is being sent to the printers tonight.
Lastly, please show off your 3x3 zone on our official Facebook group.

Do you like the radio dramas of the early decades of the 20th century? Have you dreamt of a roleplaying game designed to emulate the radio drama genre? If so, then you owe it to yourself to checkout On the Air by Spectrum Games.

I had three players: Christopher, Terry, and new guy Leroy (which makes him the first actual Leroy I remember ever meeting). On the Air (or OtA hereafter) instructs the Director (read: gamemaster) to design a series, complete with a sponsor, a small cast of primary characters (PC), and however many supporting characters (SC), recurring or not, that fit the narrative. I completed the all of the above except for the SC, which we more or less made up on the fly during the game. You can my game prep and in-game notes in the pic below:

The series was Uncanny Worlds, sponsored by Estrella Coffee, and the episode title was “The Flying Jungle of Bellatrix”. The main cast of characters was Captain James Augustus Church, Lieutenant Commander Doctor Lana “Brains” MacAvoy, and Technology and Science Android XJ14 (TASA, for short). You can see the PCs here:

Christopher played “Brains”, Terry played TASA, and Leroy played Captain Church.

The set-up introduced the episode by title, plugged the sponsor, and then described how the shuttlecraft from Space Exploration Teams Incorporated space rocket Ambition descended into Bellatrix’s atmosphere, heading to the largest of the famed flying jungles in a search for valuable deposits of floatanium, a rare anti-gravity element essential to space travel. Just as Shuttlecraft Navigator Trotsky announced, “Land ho, Captain!”, the shuttlecraft’s klaxon blared. A monstrous pteradon roared out of the clouds, claws extended, intending to prey on the shuttlecraft.

Which brings us to OtA‘s central mechanic: the Intention.

The players decided that they wanted to evade the pteradon while firing blasters out a porthole as the shuttlecraft came in for a safe landing on the flying jungle. In a traditional RPG, this would most likely be played out round-to-round, involving various skill checks and attack rolls. Not so with OtA. With the Intention system, what’s important isn’t the journey, but the destination. Everything is resolved with a single roll of the dice, and the results are narrated radio-drama style.

If you looked at the characters, you noticed they have three ability scores: Adventure, Thought, and Drama. Each score is rated, usually between -1 and 2 (but rules do include the possibility for higher ratings for super-heroics). Here’s where we hit our first foggy area in the rules, which seem to written based on the assumption of one Director and one PC.

The PC with the Intention figures out his total score based on the appropriate trait, perhaps tagging a Descriptor (such as Church’s “Former Space Soldier”). The total score may be adjusted by the opposition of an SC (such as the pteradon, which I arbitrarily decided was SC 3). Since multiple players described how their characters helped, I allowed multiple ability scores to determine the group’s total, and then reduced that total by 3 to reflect the difficulty of the encounter. One player then rolled the number of dice as shown on the “How Many Dice Do I Roll and What Do I Keep?” table. The total, which may be adjusted by Airwave Tokens (more on these later), is checked against the “Intention Results Table” to determine what happens.

An episode (read: adventure) has a time limit, which is defined by a certain number of Intentions. Since our series Uncanny Worlds has a broadcast time of 30 minutes, the episode is limited to 10 Intentions, which means the players get to roll the dice 10 times during the course of the game. Once all 10 Intentions have been used, the episodes ends, perhaps in a cliffhanger (as happened in our game session). Keep in mind that the 30 minute broadcast time is a narrative fiction; it’s not the length of the game session itself, which for us ran to about 4 hours with quite a lot of hemming and hawing and goofing off.

The “Intention Results Table” will be very familiar to anyone whose played Dungeon World or other games Powered by the Apocalypse. A 2-6 total results in a failure, which is narrated by the Director; a 7-9 means the player chooses between a Controlled Failure (narrated by the player) or a Conditional Success (narrated by the Director); and a 10+ is a Success narrated by the player.

Which brings us to narrating the game. Since OtA emulates radio dramas, everything must be described as if the game had an actual audience of people who can only hear what is happening. This includes the players and Director making appropriate sound effects. OtA has many paragraphs of advice on how to do this, and, at least for our group, it was easier to read about and explain than actually do. We’re programmed for traditional RPGs, where the audience isn’t an imaginary construct listening to the players through a radio, but rather is just the people actually in the room. Several times, we had to remind each other to explain what, say, certain hand gestures or facial expressions would be conveyed to people who couldn’t see them.

Our narrations included using Airwave Tokens to edit the scene, repeated endorsements of Estrella Coffee (almost always delivered in character as part of the episode’s dialogue), and one station break to directly advertise Estrella Coffee (the latter activity earning a Sponsorship Token). Airwave Tokens are like action points or hero points common to many games. They are earned when the Director tags a character flaw, making sound effects (once per scene), or being clever and/or true to the genre. Players start with two Airwave Tokens, they’re easy to earn, and the players spent theirs freely for scene editing, power tagging, and boosting.

If a character has a relevant description to include with an intention, one die in the dice pool gets upgraded to a d8. A tagged flaw reduces one die to a d4. With power tagging, one more die gets upgraded to a d8. The Sponsorship Token was earned for roleplaying the advertising segment, which highlighted the virtues of Estrella Coffee by the primary characters and included the main antagonist saying Estrella Coffee’s noble flavor offended his evil palate. A Sponsorship Token can be earned only once per episode. The rules appear somewhat vague to me about which player, if any, “owns” the Sponsorship Token. We treated it as a group resource. At the end of the episode, Christopher used the Sponsorship Token for an automatic success to save Captain Church.

During the episode, the PCs formed an alliance with the Jaguar Men of Bellatrix to oppose the nefarious forces of Ying the Heartless from the planet Thongu. Ying’s soldiers had enslaved many Jaguar Men, forcing them to work in the floatanium mines. There was trouble with a T-Rex, whose floatanium-infused scales made it remarkably agile. Captain Church and TASA were captured and sent to the mines after a daring attempt to escape by riding swiftly on boaboa birds, a noble effort thwarted by a hypno-cannon. “Brains” was also captured, and taken to the tent of the Thongu captain, who later was revealed to be Captain Church’s long-lost brother Gregory. There were thrilling escapes accomplished by digging through the bottom of the floating island while “Brains” drugged Gregory and used the shuttlecraft to rendezvous with Church, TASA, and many Jaguar Men in the sky beneath the flying jungle.

At this time, the Jaguar Man leader revealed that the Thongu soldiers had a sonic transducer set up to transmit the “heart of floatanium” that enabled the jungle to fly. TASA and “Brains” lead Jaguar Men into the mine to face the giant crab monster guarding the sonic transducer while Church engaged his treacherous brother in single combat. TASA used the sonic transducer to teleport the giant crab to Thongu, but not without TASA being transported as well. Church lost to his brother, but the intervention of the Sponsorship Token changed the narration so that Trotsky came roaring in on the shuttlecraft with Jaguar Men reinforcements from another village, thus saving the day.

The episode ended with a cliffhanger as TASA and the giant crab appeared in the sonic transducer reception chamber within the palace of Ying the Heartless on distant Thongu.

Throughout the episode, there were lots of sound effects, repeated dialogue singing the virtues of Estrella Coffee, and plenty of ham and cheese in the form of overacting and punny quips. We even had a recurring subplot about supporting character Security Lieutenant Wilson’s unrequited love for “Brains” remaining unrequited despite his best efforts to win over the good doctor.

All in all, OtA was great fun. It is rules light, and all of the rules are aimed at emulating the radio drama genre. The only other genre-emulation game published by Spectrum Games I’ve played is Cartoon Action Hour, which is also great fun. I don’t see OtA becoming our main game, but I definitely want to play it again.

I don't write reviews often, not least because I'm a believer in "Praise publicly, criticize privately." But some games are worth reviewing, and this is one of them.

I'm an Old-Time Radio (OTR) fan, and have been for years. I'm the only person I know whose iPod is full of Boston Blackie episodes, and I'm watching a Captain Midnight secret decoder (I only need a couple more years to complete my collection) on eBay as I type this. In retrospect, it makes perfect sense to use OTR as a basis for a game.

OTR is neatly packaged up in either self-contained episodes or serials. It is chock full of dramatic situations, exciting events, and heroic characters, sometimes with special abilities. It can take place in a nearby or a distant jungle, or just about anywhere else. In short, it's perfectly set up for an RPG campaign.

And On The Air captures that perfectly (at least as best I can tell from reading it; playing will require finding at least one more OTR fan around here) The game system is geared toward dramatic action rather than grittily realistic simulation. It's laid out well and should be very easy to get into. The game system is simple in comparison to many, but perfectly suited to the subject.

In addition, there is quite a lot of information on OTR itself, including some recommended shows. (note that archive dot org has many of them available for download nowadays) It was cool finding some of my favorites on there; I just downloaded a batch of Johnny Dollar episodes I haven't heard) If you've ever so much as heard of the Shadow and think there might be something interesting or gameable there, get this game. You won't regret spending the price of a sandwich on it.

Honestly, my only quibble with it is the formatting: The layout is beautiful, and looks awesome on the screen, great production values, but I'd really like to have a bare-bones, no-background, copy of the rules I could print out, too, because I'm one of those people who just likes things on dead trees.

Rating:

[5 of 5 Stars!]

Creator Reply:

Thanks for the amazing review, Jean. I'm thrilled that you like the game. I think you'll be surprised at how easy you'll find gamers who are willing to roleplay in the worlds of OTR.
The game will be available as a hardcopy book. I'll be sending the PDF for print approval within a day or two. Also, I plan to make a printer-friendly version of the rulebook available so it won't be hard on people's ink.
Thanks again for the review. Word of mouth is crucial for the survival of small press games. :)

Wild West Cinema is a quick, easy, and rules lite western game. While it presents itself as a 'Hollywood Western' game, you can easily play a more historic campaign. The system is reminiscent of ICONS super hero rpg, with about the same level of crunch. While there are several archetype characters to choose from, the system is simple enough to create other character types as well in just a few minutes.

Well here is a little review for Warriors of the Cosmos book. It creates a setting/series that is playable for Cartoon Action Hour 3rd edition. It simulates a cartoon series that lasted 6 seasons along with the failed movie and failed girl focused spin off series.

Also note I do have link to the company behind book and friend to people who produce it so I mite be a bit biased in this review.

First thing off I do think this is the most interesting series book to date. it really startles the line between rpg book and feeling like a book for popular cartoon series. It does capture the feel with the interviews with production staff, the bits of history and gossip and well the treating vehicles and bases as actual toys verses describing just the places to adventure in. The one aspect I would have changed in that case would have a few more episode summaries (adventure seeds) placed in the seasons they happen. Currently they are in GM Section of the book. This makes sense from rpg point of view, but breaks a bit on simulating being a TV series.

Though a better description of the book should be given. It starts with introduction and gives "backstory" on how the series was created. It then gives a broad view of the world and then does chapter for all 6 seasons plus characters for each season. Beyond that we get description of an un-produced movie, spin off and more modern reboot series aimed at teen and adults. It then has player section with new random character creation and GM section on handle series, advice on making series Gm own and episode (adventure) seeds plus one adventure.

This produces both one of the longest CAH series book, but also one that should be ready to play out of the book. Though admittedly there is a lot of meta-fiction in the book that not everyone will like or use. I personally enjoy this type of meta-fiction.

As I said what really stands out in this product is bringing series to life with both good and bad decisions and elements that make if feel more like real cartoon. Also I had fun with Cynthia throwing in characters based around stuff she likes including female Judge Dread and character based on movie Manos: Hands of Fate. This all mixed together creates an interesting book I highly recommend.

Great idea for an 80's era cartoon, turned into an even better supplement for Spectrums' wonderful rpg Cartoon Action Hour. Players create agents from all around the world, battling to drive off the alien 'Starmada' while using the ruins of the United Nations building as a base of operations. Tons of fun for the whole table!

I know that this was issued as an April Fool's Day joke - as indicated by the page at the end in which Spectrum start out by saying they are planning at least 8 source books . . . before stting that it's an April Fool.

The game itself is actually rather fun. It's a quick and simple game to play - if you're looking for a serious game with more in-depth characters and a wider skill-set then you need to look for a different system. Rules are minimal and essentially involves rolling a D6 and comparing the result to a stat that you are using.
Characters are created in a manner of minutes - there are 5 stats and you roll 6D6 and ignore the lowest dice, make any 1s left a 4 and then apply the remaining values to your 5 stats - with 2 being the best score and 6 being the worst.
You then get to assign up to 3 Positive Qualities and 1 Negative Quality to your character. These give bonueses or penalties to your dice roll.
As the game progresses you will earn and spend Edit Points which can be used to allow re-rolls or to change something in a scene.
There's a TV show format to the game with segements interrupted by Commercial Breaks - you roll on a table to see the result of the Ad Break - your show can gain or lose viewers, one or more characters can gain Edit Points due to their popularity or lack-of.

All in all a fun game. I've done a couple of shows with this format - Porn Stars Got Talent (a talent show for former porn stars who are trying to change thier career by doing singing or stand-up-comedy); Celebrity Riggers (an elimination competition in which Z-List Celebrities try their hand at working on an off-shore oil rig) and Teecherz (a fly on the wall day-to-day life study of a group of teachers in a seriously bad fictional school).

I think that this material is well presented and has a lot to offer. The author does a great job of capturing the atmosphere of a splatter comic and explaining the elements of a great story. The explaination of putting together a game using the three act structure will be valuable for both this and other game systems you may run.

There is something about this approach though. Any game that uses a three act structure cannot deviate too far from a pre-determined conclusion. It's not exactly on rails. The players have the ability to add to the narrative. However, it also isn't an open game where the story is allow to run in any direction.

The intention system used by this game is legit. You could use it without any trouble and I think most people will pick it up easily. The problem is that it offers nothing over all the systems you probably already know. It has limited skill based system that gets modified and everything is thrown against a ladder of success. You can use grave tokens to do things like add to the narrative. So the temptation for me is just to run a game using FATE accelerated which also does those exact same things only probably better and all of the players will already be familiar with the system.

The interesting thing, at least for me, is that I'm not sure how well all of this will truly work. People like to win. And this game like so many others encourages players to fight for their life and win the battle. If you are familiar with 'Tales from The Crypt' and similar EC comics you will note that nobody ever wins. Usually, there aren't even any good guys. I suppose 'Twilight Zone' and similar stories will play well on this system but I don't think that's the main target.

Honestly, it feels like the goal of the game should be to get your despicable character killed in the third act in some righteous twist. The player should have tools to narrate this demise and the skill with which they execute it should be measurable. However well they pull off the character death the player should receive rewards that carry over to the next game. That is what is missing from this system and it is what would make it complete. Unfortunately it completely flies in the face of the system. A system that rewards and supports keeping a character alive. It's the same reason that FATE sucks for horror games.

A real fun book that captures the style of both the period and running an RPG, not just baised on the wolrd of a TV program, but running the program itself. I bought this game, really, just to read the book and maybe get some ideas from it. It impressed me enough that I am going to run a Retrostar series for my friends. The main weakness of the book would be that it could use a chapter that goes more in depth about how to write and beet chart the 5 atc television screen play.